


Alice in Lordran

by SootPen



Category: Alice In Wonderland - Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland (1951), Dark Souls (Video Games), Dark Souls I
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Canon, Canon Related, Canon Universe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-31
Updated: 2017-02-25
Packaged: 2018-09-21 04:17:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9531149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SootPen/pseuds/SootPen
Summary: That odd little girl Alice has fallen down the rabbit hole once again, but this is not Wonderland she has found herself in! Childish innocence and curiosity are the truest weapons ever forged.





	1. Undead Asylum

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Momoisme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Momoisme/gifts).



Why do rabbits burrow? The grass is awfully sweet and soft, and the dirt never seems to bother them much. Alice wriggled her head into the hole in the ground, caring little for the state of her periwinkle dress or groomed head of blond hair. She called out a soft and questioning hello, and she waited with the expectation of a curious child.

She supposed that rabbits burrow for the same reason as humans build. Rabbits need a roof, too, for when the Sun is a little too hot or the wind is a little too cold and nips at your arms until tiny gooses wake up in your skin and bump against the inside. So why do humans build? Storms and much ruder people come around to knock down houses.

Meanwhile, rabbits are always safe in their burrows. This is what Alice thought to herself as she continued wriggling her way into the rabbit’s burrow, oblivious. She was soon sliding all the way in, the earth consuming her up to her waist, then her knees, and finally her shoes as she disappeared entirely, leaving behind a bright and shiny and uncaring day.

Alice saw nothing but felt herself falling, a sort of wind that was colder and harder than air whistling around her ears and nose. She considered fear, but she dismissed the concept entirely. What was there to be afraid of? She was falling, yes, but there is no danger in falling. She could see no ground to hit after she stopped falling. Then, she stopped falling.

 

\---

 

Alice reached out for dirt and grass but felt only stone. Her finger traced along lines of mortar, and her eyes adjusted to the dim lighting and fell on the brickwork. The rabbit’s burrow was a cell now, with its damp interior and door of metal bars, with the only sunlight streaming in from the same hole in the ceiling through which a corpse was being thrown. This was the same corpse that struck the bricks beside her with a strangely soft thud. A key fell out of its pocket to clank distractingly on the stone, saving her the time and effort of searching the cadaver. She turned her head back to the hole, where a figure in plate armor was crouched staring down at her. The knight, for surely that was the most apt descriptor, nodded. Alice nodded in return, and the knight disappeared.

Alice stood, dusted off her dress as she was taught a lady should do after getting up, and bent to retrieve the key. She had no idea if that key fit the lock in the door. In retrospect, she had no reason to believe that the knight was trying to help her escape her cell. After all, that nod could have just been a reply to her own. Any person would respond in kind to such a hello. People just do that kind of thing.

The key opened the cell door, and the door swung open with a rusty squeak that spoke to Alice of its age. It must have held shut that cell for ages in the damp and dark, and Alice had overcome it. Emboldened by her victory, Alice marched proudly ahead, groping at the brickwork in the dimness. 

The first person she came across did not respond to her questioning and innocent hello. Neither did the next. Both were turned around, facing the wall with their hands covering their eyes. A curious sort of people must live here--a curious sort of people that happened to have rotten, emaciated flesh. Alice realized that she was no longer in Britain and not even on mainland Europe. She did not, however, completely rule out America or the Far East. She had heard stranger stories.

The hallway ended with a room half-sunk in brackish water, and Alice chose the stone walkway that continued off to the side. The water was not very pleasant in its smell, and Alice began to realize that the whole place had a foul stench. She wrinkled her nose at that small epiphany and continued through, leaving another one of those strange men waist-high in the dark, swirling fluid. 

Metal connected with stone, once, twice, thrice, four times--or is it fice? Why is there no word past thrice that means the same? But if four is fice, then does five not become fice? Alice felt muddled in her thinking even as a rather large sphere of smooth iron, much like a large cannonball, swept past from off a staircase and collided with the wall to her right, caving in the wall and opening a new door into a separate chamber. The dust clung to her dress as she continued to ponder the problem at hand. Four could be fouice, as in fwice, and five could take fice for itself, she settled. Her vigor renewed once more by a personal victory over the unconquerable, she peeked through the broken wall.

The knight from before was on the same level as her now. He was lying on a pile of the stone bricks that made up this building, and light shined down on him from the hole in the shattered ceiling. Red pooled around him like red liquids tend to so often do in the presence of the unfortunate. He mentioned something about the prophecy of the Undead, to ring the Bell of Awakening in the gods’ country Lordran, to link the fire. He told her that his name was Oscar, and that she should have the green Estus flask that he carried that glowed with the warm orange of fireflies. She accepted his gift with the humble grace of a proper lady, and that was when she remembered to dust off her dress again.  
She offered to help him to a doctor. He politely declined and seemingly died.

Alice climbed the stairs to the next storey. She was not too upset at poor Oscar’s death. She was sorry for it, but he was a knight. Is it not a knight’s greatest dream to die in battle against the horrors of the world? Then again, it is all too possible that he had fallen through the roof all on his own. What a shame, Alice thought to herself, if that was the case and she had refused to bemoan his untimely death. She looked down into the Estus flask, still aglow, and wondered where she could put it. 

She returned to Oscar’s limp form and found a large pouch easily fashioned into a backpack for herself. Alice was triumphant once more in the face of adversity, and she thanked “Brave Sir Oscar” for his assistance, and she said that she was greatly indebted to him, and that should he ever require her help--Oh, wait, right. Alice thanked “Brave Sir Oscar” for his assistance, and she said that she was greatly indebted to him, and that he would live on in her memory as a--Alice lost her train of thought, frowned, and stomped her foot. Alice thanked “Brave Sir Oscar” and returned to the staircase.

At the top of the stairs was a balcony overlooking a dreary, grey landscape. She could make out little in the way of terrain, other than the spit of cliff jutting out just below where the exit door must be. Leading back to the rest of the building but hopefully to another set of stairs, one that would take her to that exit, was a doorframe. However, she saw no door. White, wispy smoke filled every inch of the frame. She touched her hand to it and met some resistance, but she somehow knew she would pass through unscathed.  
Alice pressed through the fog door and saw below her a massive beast. It stood on two legs and wielded a hammer, and she thought the whole thing incredibly ugly. It was the most vile shade of green, with branches and crests of flesh and bone on its head and warts covering its lower body. It huffed up at her indignantly, as if to say it did not have all day. Alice huffed back, as if to say she would be down in just a minute.

Alice’s next thought was that she did not want to face that monster at all. She went back through the fog door, spat in her hands and rubbed them together, and turned to grip at the decorations of the balcony and brick wall and descend to the cliff below.

She made it halfway down before falling and landing on her bottom. She sucked air through her teeth in pain, rubbing her rear with oos and ahs of regret. However, hindsight comforted her, as she saw this had been her only real choice. There was a colossal iron door as the exit to the building, and she could hear beating on the other side--once, twice, thrice, fouice. Alice stuck out her tongue. Victory was sweet once more.

Alice looked down the remainder of a pathway to the end of the cliff. How had she thought this was the exit? It led nowhere. She passed rocks and ruins like grey tombstones and reached the very precipice. She looked out over grey nothingness blurred by the distance between here and there. Grey became black, blurriness replaced by the soft texture and sharp edges of feathers, as a giant crow flew up in front of her. Without warning, she was trapped in its talons, clutched gently in its taloned toes, yet she felt safe. Why should the crow harm her?

Besides, she was not even falling. And even then, she could not see the ground.


	2. Firelink Shrine and Up to the Burg

The blade of the sword was twisted steel, coiling into the earth at an angle like an ostrich with its head plunged in the dirt. Flames licked at the metal, and it glowed with orange heat. Otherwise, it was a normal old campfire, with a few ashen branches from the remnants of a pyramidal bunch of kindling. Alice yawned, stretching her arms, warmed from without and within by the fire. It was a hopeful feeling, one that Alice usually felt on Christmas dawn before church and feasting. When she stood, the inner warmth disappeared, and the outer warmth was mostly focused on her legs. It was actually quite a small fire, but she supposed that was appropriate. So is hope.

Across the fire sat a knight, or so Alice would assume, garbed in chainmail. His lined face betrayed his whole attitude before his voice stole the chance. The Crestfallen Warrior had a sardonic grin for the newcomer, eyes a-twinkle, in a way that Alice knew could only be for some distraction such as her. He commented on her being here for the Fate of the Undead without even being asked. He continued with his unprovoked exposition by explaining to her that the first of the Bells of Awakening was in the Undead Church past the Undead Burgh that was normally accessible by a now-broken lift. He added that the second was far below, in a horrible mire called Blighttown. He gestured to the Bonfire, as he termed it, and elucidated.

Alice stood silently and took in the sights around her, generally ignoring the poor man. A stone wall encircled the Bonfire--of Firelink Shrine, the Crestfallen Warrior explained, still unknowingly ignored--but her floor was grass and there was a beautiful view of the Sun through one of the many windows and doorways. She could hear the Warrior become even more Crestfallen as she skipped away, finding a path downward. The Shrine spread out to the cliffside, and the staircase wrapped around the face. She took the steps rapidly one at a time, her flats slapping resoundly against the stone, with her fingers tracing along the wall until they touched air, then metal, then air, then metal, then air, then metal again. The third bar stopped Alice, as she grabbed it and pulled herself to a halt. 

Behind a cell’s grating, stuck almost randomly in the cliff, was a woman. She lay on the barren dirt floor, staring at that same barrenness and dirtiness. Her hair was pulled back in a blond bun. A grey cloak was wrapped around her but made her seem even less comfortable. Alice asked her name and was given no response. Alice asked why she was there but was told nothing in return. Alice sat on the steps outside the cell and cocked her head at the woman inside, who actually seemed rather pretty to her. She told her so. That brought the woman’s head up, just enough for Alice to make out the dreariness clawing at the woman’s face, before it fell down again.

Alice returned to the bonfire to ask the Crestfallen Warrior of the woman below, but he simply shrugged and said she was a Fire Keeper. What is a Fire Keeper? was Alice’s next question. The Warrior answered that she tended the flame. Alice asked how she could tend the flame from down there, in the cliff, below the flame. The Warrior said that was just how it worked. Alice thought that was very stupid. She said that was very stupid. The Warrior shrugged and agreed, but he repeated that it worked anyhow. Alice asked for a key. The Warrior reminded her there was no door.

Alice found one more person in the Shrine, hiking the gentle, grassy slope of the top instead of trekking around the face, ducking under ten-foot arches in the walls of tan stone brick that winded around and through and all over this place. She passed by a rectangular pool of water and heard snoring but no snorer. What she did find, another room over, was a rather fat man in armor. The armor had a skirt.

When Alice pointed out these facts, Petrus of Thorolund, as he was to give his name, insisted that it was the shape of the armor that made him seem rather big. He was actually muscled and well-prepared to fight for the sake of the Priestess, his charge. A mace hung from his waist and clanged against his armor as if to punctuate the sentence. Alice asked about the skirt-like armor again. He said it was most certainly designed to help deflect sword strokes, and it performed this task quite well. Alice smiled. Armor that was both so fashionable and protective? All the soldiers back in England should be wearing this.

Alice saw the Sun lowering in the sky. The Warrior continued to sit near the bonfire, so Alice sat opposite and warmed her hands. She lay on her side, using the soft grasses and mosses as her bed and pillow. This was a poor substitute, but Alice took heart in the poetic nature of the manner. She would wake up with a sore back and complain, but for now she was truly the adventurer of an old romance. That was enough of a fancy to distract from the want of a blanket.

 

\----------------------------------

 

Alice found her morning’s trek to lead her up the cliff this time. Behind her, the giant crow was preening its feathers, comfortable in its nest, high in the crumbling stone of the Firelink Shrine. From this distance, she could take in the Shrine as the mass of tan stone and broken roofs and forgotten chambers that it was. The Crestfallen Warrior was perched by the bonfire, much like that crow, dark and haunting but a reassuring presence nonetheless. She left behind Petrus of Thorolund clutching his talisman and awaiting the Priestess. She could not see her, but she knew that the Fire Keeper was alone and silent. The Sun was there too, behind her, ever-present, ever-warming. Ahead of her was far more important, however. 

As she rounded the staircase that climbed up the cliff face, her eyes were lifted up to the sight of a massive stone bridge spanning the space between her cliff and the one opposite--two separate mountains, really. That opposite side bore stone turrets like leaves on branches, she could already see. She was, however, oblivious to the inhabitants of this grassy approach. The men with rotted faces--Hollows, had Petrus and the Crestfallen Warrior called them?--tracked her movements with eyes indisposed to vision but that glared their glares all the same. Their lanky, withered forms were burdened with armor similarly malnourished in the way of metals and leathers: frayed, rusted, moth-eaten, battered. Their vertebra creaked as their heads turned and their joints felt some work, but they did not get up from their seats in the grass or on piles of rubble. They did not move to intercept and harass her. The Hollows could not find it in themselves to pursue. Their hunger was endless, but they seemed confused at this meal of souls. Who was this girl, some unsought thought sparked in their dulled minds, to pass by, uncaring, curious? Was this some small godling born anew from the flame, some demon from down below in the ruins of Lost Izalith? Is this a human, but one so unlike they had been?

Alice took the stairs two at a time, paying the Hollows no mind. The staircase was set in the side of the bridge, allowing entrance inside it rather than on top of it. Watery filth clung to her shoes as she let out an “eugh” or “echh” or however one describes an immediate reaction of disgust. Alice had a dreadful feeling that this would become a common occurrence, but at least the Sun was quick to return as she traveled along the inside of the sluice bridge to another opening, leading her onto an outer wall of the Undead Burg. She looked out over the sprawling stone landscape, the grey rock that rose like a tidal wave up the mountain, towers like teeth and the ramparts encircling the tops also like teeth. The pointed roofs of dwellings and cathedrals were also very much like teeth, appropriate as the earth had been swallowed by civilization. As impressive as these teeth were, gleaming in the strokes of the Sun splayed across them, another set of pearly whites made itself aware. The stone not too far in front of her cracked under the taloned feet and scaley weight of a red dragon--a real dragon! 

She grinned ear-to-ear, amazed at the king of lizards before her, wings spread as it alighted with a crash and a deafening roar. Crimson blazed along its side like fire as Alice staggered back, gripping the walls of the battlements. But as quickly as it had been there, it had departed in a gale of beating wind, threatening Alice’s balance. The dragon sailed away, farther into the city, higher into the city. Alice righted herself and made note of where it landed. The Bells of Awakening could wait. There was a dragon to find.  
Sometimes Alice could be a very worrisome girl.


	3. Undead Burg and Dwayne Johnson

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where is that darned girl off to this time?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I know Havel is Hollow and by all means should not be able to respond. However, I am an author, and I am taking certain liberties. It was either have Havel talk or skip him. Also, yes, I know the door should be locked. But we are not going to care about locked doors. Because I forgot to mention the possibility of a master key earlier, and I do not want to bother writing it in now. I am absolutely making this up as I go along. If you have criticisms, I will gladly take them, but warning: I legit have no idea what I am doing. Thanks for reading, everyone! I appreciate the hits and the kudos. Never expected any.

To her left stretched grey clouds, that blanket that never warms the fingers and toes but is instead content to be a thankless sheet of off-colored wool hanging over everyone. In many places, it was broken by the radiant Sun. The blazing circle in the sky was hidden at the moment, but its illumination was still persevering, same as Alice, through the gloom. That light had to trek meters and meters and meters still of empty space, or so Alice’s teachers and tutors had told her, and Alice herself knew she had meters and meters and meters to walk. She saw little difference in the distance, so long as the sunlight had shoes just as comfortable as hers.

Through a house and up another staircase, past a house and up another staircase--oh, Alice knew this was going to become all too familiar. This stretch of her journey--which was about five or ten or fifteen minutes of walking, maybe twenty if she were to think on it more--brought her close to another bonfire. A short wooden bridge brought her into the base of a tower, one of many whose tops reached this level of the city, one of many whose bases began in this level of the city. It seemed much the same as the last. Someone had thrust a coiled sword into the cobblestones, and flames licked up the blade. On such a day as this, she was thankful for a bit of heat, as the height of the city and the grey of the day made for a mentionable wind chill. A few minutes of heating her hands at its orange glow brought life into her limbs and a smile to her lips, and the Hollows watched her, watched and mentally shrugged or physically shrugged or made some effort to do something similar with their peeling brains and shoulders.

Alice found little surprise ahead in her journey. Her shoes met with a clunk against stone and wood and stone and wood, over bridges and up stairs and through doors. Her eyes narrowed in irritation and suspicion every time she saw those ninety-degree angles. She realized that there was one fiend here, one enemy she would have to overcome time and time again. Those putrid little blocks, carved or stacked, cut and hewn stone. Her calves burned. Her thighs chafed. Her ankles felt like paper stretched tight over glass. She swore an oath against stairkind, but she immediately realized just how rude that was and prepared an apology.

Her apology was swiftly forgotten. She opened a door, walked inside, and found stairs leading up to her left, spiraling against the inside of the wall. She walked further in and opened another door, looking down in dismay at the steps clinging to the curving walls like laughing, mocking insects. Two could play at that game, stone city. Two could play at that game.

Alice promptly plopped onto her rear and took the stairs one at a time, jolting her neck with each drop but refusing to act otherwise. She dropped from step to step to step, as if the spiral staircase was a poorly-constructed slide. She saw no reason to laugh at this matter. She saw no reason to change her course of action. This all made perfect sense, and, frankly, there is no reason it should not make perfect sense when one’s legs are tired. 

Several thoughts, however, ran through Havel’s head when he saw this transpire--or, rather, saw the effects. From his bastion at the foot of the tower, his own locked room, he looked up at the curious girl with golden hair and a dress of a very pretty blue bumping her rear on every stair, edging ever downward. As for Havel, well, Alice could not see him under his armor. It was grey and rugged, and it seemed to have the very texture of rock. His massive shield was the same, looking like someone had just chiseled it out of a boulder. In his hand, Alice saw a tooth. It was a rather big tooth, though. It was taller than Alice. It was taller than Havel, who grasped the fang by the point.

“That’s-- a-- tooth,” Alice remarked, dropping with each syllable. 

“Yes, it is,” replied Havel.

“Some-- one-- must-- be-- miss-- ing-- it,” she continued.

“Not anymore. They are long dead.”

“Oh-- then-- I-- supp-- ose-- the-- point-- is-- moot.”

“Indeed. I thought that door had been locked.”

“It-- was-- not.”

“You just opened it? Just like that?” questioned a skeptical Havel.

“Did-- you-- ev-- er-- try-- to-- op-- en-- it?”

Havel recalled that he had not. He had been told through the door that it was locked, so many years ago. “Obviously I have tried to open it.”

“Odd-- then.”

“Odd indeed.”

Alice finally reached the floor, where she had to look up at the man garbed in armor that would have been too heavy even for one of those elephants her uncle had seen in India. Now that she thought about it, her uncle had said that an elephant is big and grey. Those checked out on Havel. She almost asked before realizing the lack of trunk and ears and quadrupedalism. She held her tongue this time and continued to stare.

After a few more moments, she said, “My name is Alice.”

A few moments after that, he said, “My name is Havel.”

The two names filled the dark, dank room. Torchlight flickered as the names drifted through them and bounced off the walls. Alice and Havel seemed to touch every stone as they filled the chamber, an awkward echo in a misplaced silence that climbed up the bricks as it drizzled down to the floorboards.

“Bishop Havel the Rock, that is,” Havel corrected himself, adding a formal title. Alice’s face lit up in joy.

“A bishop! Where is your church, Reverend Havel?” queried Alice, finally having found something familiar to her. Havel, however, just became more confused.

“I have no church.”

“A bishop without a church? Where does your congregation pray?”

“I no longer have a congregation, I am afraid.”

“Oh.” Alice nodded. “I understand entirely,” she said sagely.

Havel started. This young girl could truly connect with his misery? “You do?”

“Of course. My Aunt Matilda left the church and went to join the Catholics. Mother and father were practically in mourning the whole time.”

Havel had no clue what she was talking about. Alice, meanwhile, was completely sure of what she was talking about and what Havel was talking about. She had a full grasp of the situation, she was certain. Havel glanced up the stairs.

“So the door is unlocked?”

“Yes.”

“And it is open?”

“Yes. Why are you down here?”

“What?”

Havel was startled by this question. In fact, he was having a rather rough time meeting a person after however many years had passed. He had taken only a few steps to the staircase before Alice had asked her pointed question.

“Why are you down here?”

Havel sighed. “A friend locked me in here.”

“That does not sound much like a friend at all.”

“It was a very complex relationship.”

“Are you his friend?”

“And what does that mean?”

“He is your friend, but are you his friend?” expounded Alice. “I do not think I have any friends who would lock me in a room, at least not for too long.”

Havel shook his head. “Girl--”

“Alice.”

How forward she was! “Alice, it is a long story that I have little motivation to give.”

“Then tell it to me later.”

“You expect us to meet again?”

“There is a place called Firelink Shrine,” said Alice, hoping and hoping that she had remembered the name correctly. Irebrink... Direshrink... No, no, definitely Firelink. “A couple nice men set up there to rest. You could all talk. And when I get back, you can tell me your story."

Havel was unsure how to respond to such an overflow of undeserved camaraderie in about five minutes of conversation. He never had children. He never was around them at all, really. Were all children like this? Wide-eyed and blunt and so insistent? 

“You are not leaving until you say yes.”

“Perhaps.”

“Not good enough.” Alice hopped up one step, landing her rear above and behind. Havel kept stepping forward, and she kept hopping back.

“Perhaps.”

“No, sorry,” Alice giggled at him as they kept climbing the stairs together. Every time he lifted his foot, she threw herself backwards and upwards. They ascended in a little dance, and their names traveled with them. Havel and Alice crawled up the stones and stairs and oozed up through the floorboards. Havel and Alice kept climbing until they reached the room Alice had first entered.

“So?”

“Perhaps,” Havel said. Alice was completely sure of what was underneath his helmet. Havel was unsure. He was smiling.


End file.
